Once Upon a Ridge: A Family Memoir

By William B. Pittard III MD PhD MPH

Supin Lick Mountain in Rockingham County, Virginia, offers residents majestic views that make it easy to contemplate life, enjoy solitude, and gain wisdom.

Its a place that the Pittard family has enjoyed for three generations, and during that time, theyve built the cabin of their dreams while mingling with local residents.

In this family memoir, William B. Pittard III highlights the mountains stellar beauty, amazing wildlife, and the lifestyle of mountain residents who embrace hard manual labor while assisting those in need. While some might think these mountain folk are a bit clannish, they treat neighbors the same way theyd want to be treated.

Life on the mountain has changed in the last century with electricity, telephones, and reliable modes of transportation, but the setting itself with its dirt/gravel roadways canopied by expansive trees has not. The genuine willingness, even expectation, to take responsibility for ones own actions also remains unchanged.

Join the Pittard family as they become one with the mountain, enjoying sunrises in the mornings, plantings in the spring, bright leaves against sunny blue skies, and so much more in Once Upon a Ridge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491792445

William B. Pittard III MD PhD MPH

William B. Pittard III, MD, PhD, MPH, earned his medical degree from the University of Virginia, a master of public health degree in maternal and child health from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and a Ph.D. in health services and policy management from the University of South Carolina. He is professor emeritus at the Medical University of South Carolina and formerly taught at Case Western Reserve University.

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Copyright © 2016 William B. Pittard III, MD, PhD, MPH.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-9243-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-9244-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016905860

iUniverse rev. date: 07/30/2016

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Chapter 1 Life On Supin Lick Mountain

Chapter 2 Search For Pristine Mountain Land

Chapter 3 Supin Lick Mountain: An Overview

Chapter 4 Ownership Of The Pittard Supin Lick Mountain Property, Nineteenth Century—Present

Chapter 5 Public Schooling On Supin Lick Mountain

Chapter 6 The Molding Of A Pittard Family Supin Lick Mountain Bond

About The Author

Appendix 1

To my wife, children, and grandchildren, who experienced the events described in this book, written in the hope that they will keep the memories alive for future generations.

Foreword

My introduction to Supin Lick Mountain began in the early 1950s when my grandfather purchased land to the south of Supin Lick Road. There was a usable cabin; outbuildings, which served as additional sleeping areas; an outhouse; and the remains of a large farmhouse.

During my teen and college years, the Cabin, as we called it, became a center of activity. It was used by a variety of groups and individuals and became a special place for our family. Often neighbors would drop by or we would visit them.

My parents purchased land north of Supin Lick Road in the 1960s also with an older cabin. My children grew up spending weekends fishing in a pond on the property, hiking in the woods, and visiting with family and friends. We particularly admired the beauty of a stone fence around the cabin that a farmer had built with his bare hands perhaps two hundred years earlier.

When on the mountain, my grandfather would often remind us that this is home to the people living up here. We must always remember that we are outsiders and should show respect for them and their way of life.

I grew up in Broadway, Virginia, just a few miles east of Supin Lick Mountain. As a Broadway High School student I had classmates and friends who lived on the mountain and in its surrounding townships, including Fulks Run, Bergton, Sowers Hollow, Hopkins Gap, and Runions Creek. By them, I was familiarized with many mountain stories.

I received a bachelor of arts degree at Bridgewater College with a major in history and minor in English. After college, I was awarded a master’s degree in school administration and counseling from Madison College, now James Madison University, in Harrisonburg and received additional courses in school administration at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

In my career, I served as a teacher and administrator in the Rockingham and Shenandoah County school systems for thirty-one years. After retirement, I spent ten years training future teachers in the Schools of Education of both the Eastern Mennonite and James Madison Universities, both in Harrisonburg.

It was an exciting day when Dr. Pittard (the locals call him the doctor) and I met. We quickly discovered that we shared a kinship with love for Supin Lick Mountain. I remember being elated when he told me he intended to write this book. His story is about real people who were born, lived, and died on this mountain. His story is one that needs to be told. It is a story you will want to read.

Mr. Jerry M. Wampler

9109 Centerville Road

Bridgewater, Virginia 22812

Preface

Supin Lick Mountain, located in Rockingham County, Virginia, reaches 2,028 feet (618.13 meters) above sea level. Its size and solitude have for many years provided personal reassurance and prompted speculative wisdom through contemplation among its residents.

Today, Supin Lick Mountain remains unspoiled and pristine. It is crisscrossed by gravel-dirt roads canopied by large trees and offers spectacular views of flora and fauna. The setting is a place to meditate, listen to the birds, be aware of God’s presence, and trade daily stress for peace of mind.

This book is directed to more traditional family-oriented readers. Individuals who are reassured by spirituality, enjoy nature, and seek outdoor activities will find the book refreshing and rewarding. Three decades of family teamwork remodeling an old mountain cabin are summarized along with the excitement of children growing up; exploring the mountainside; picking blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries; experiencing morning sunrises and evening sunsets; and taking in star-filled nights around a warm fire roasting marshmallows, all in a setting with minimal or no commercial noise at all.

While Supin Lick Mountain is spiritual, the required lifestyle for its residents has been and remains today more rugged than that of less rural settings. Mountain folk can be quite clannish and protective of their personal mind-sets. As a child, my parents discussed this culture with me, but as an infrequent visitor, I failed to grasp the depth of its significance. Only after purchasing property in 1975 and more frequent exposure to area shops, residents, schools, and churches, have I and my entire family more fully appreciated this lifestyle.

While life in several Virginia mountain settings has been previously published, that of Supin Lick Mountain has not. The love for this summit by its residents, although immediately sensed by visitors, is only understood with extensive interaction. Appreciation comes simultaneously with genuine respect for the mountain residents, their beliefs, and the sheer beauty of the terrain.

My purpose in writing this book is to fill the long-standing information gap regarding Supin Lick Mountain’s unique and supportive culture for those who have never been exposed to it. A second purpose is to leave a written description of this mountain setting as well as a summation of the shared experiences and memories with children, grandchildren, and friends by my wife and me on this land.

Chapter 1

LIFE ON SUPIN LICK MOUNTAIN

Supin Lick Mountain is actually a summit in the northwestern corner of Rockingham County, Virginia. This chapter is intended to familiarize the reader with the past and current culture in this mountain setting. The neighborly concern of local mountain residents is an art seemingly lost in many more urban environs. While modified by modern modes of transportation and communication, genuineness, respect, and empathy for others remain routine mountain mores. Indeed, when on Supin Lick Mountain, one can easily sense this thinking.

Perhaps hard working with a consistent awareness of God’s presence best describes these mountain folk and their mind-set per se. Their way of life is consistent with the motif and relatively isolated setting of the Pittard cabin purchased in June 1982.

The cabin is a 930-square-foot two-story structure with a covered front porch, eight feet wide, extending across the entire front wall. There are four rooms. The downstairs has a living room with well-used furniture and a large potbelly stove for heat, and a kitchen with a smaller heat-providing potbelly stove as well as a dish cabinet, table and chairs, porcelain sink, propane stove, and refrigerator.

After climbing a forty-five-degree angle set of two-feet-wide stairs with no railing from the living room, there are two bedrooms upstairs. The south-side bedroom is twelve by seventeen feet with a single and a double bed and the north-side bedroom is twelve by twenty feet with two single beds and two double beds.

There were no double-hung windows in the cabin when purchased, but there was ample window light throughout. Electricity was supplied from a porch distributor panel with four screw-in fuses. A shallow thirty-foot well with an electric pump provided water to the kitchen sink most of the summer, but with a strong taste of iron as well as a slight smell of sulfur. With an outhouse in the front yard, the kitchen porcelain sink constituted the entire indoor plumbing.

The walls of the living room displayed several stuffed animals, including a most unattractive but super conversation-stimulating wild boar’s head that for several years annually had a new, approximately four- to five-foot snake skin on its neck. Additional living room stuffed animals included an owl, a hawk, and a red squirrel. There were also numerous wild turkey feathers displayed on the walls. Lastly, there were oddities on the walls, such as a calendar for the year 1981.

Under the cabin, there were two shelves with several quart-sized jars of canned fruits and vegetables with no date of canning marked. There were also tools such as a sickle, pick, shovel, and posthole digger, and an old metal Sinclair gas sign in remarkably good condition.

In addition to the two-seater outhouse, there was an approximately twelve-by-twelve-foot shed in the yard where several quartz stones and an assortment of arrowheads were found by our children Ben, Andrew, Emily, and Bill IV. There were also several fruit-bearing trees in the yard and along the driveway, including four or five peach, three or four apple, and a forty- to fifty-foot-tall cherry.

While life on this mountain has perhaps been more difficult